64 "My husband Inay be vice-president of his cOlnpan but I In the president of Inine. Ii I'm a Doncaster representative. ItThree or four times each year I hold private showings in my home of the latest Doncaster fashion collections. Suits coats and dresses priced to sell for $80 to 5250. "Made with custom touches like indi- vidua1ized fabric selection and personal fitting. Things you just can't get in off-the-rack clothes. It Doncaster also has Young Traditions. A new line of sportswear priced from $12 to $90. And made with the saIne care that goes into the more expensive Doncasters. tlOf course, one of the nicest thIngs about being a Doncaster representative is that I can buy my own Doncasters at a substantial savings. So I never have to worry about what to wear ..: .,. ø "'. . ",:: <. % ':f '$ .. ..'!'"-)...... " ""' t; ;.. ... ..:-. '. "-- . , '.'iQ ,,<-., A. , \'; T' t;"=:: I " . /, t;'.: :'. . .{ i} << '.. ..... ,,; '" m- .'.: f"' .". :". ...... "*'. -..... ^'. .... .'':= iJlIP\.." .... þ .... " <'''-i. ; ... '.: .Þ :.:.:... !I... " .-.::" "v i",* . " _!l .;. ,.. . '^ . 11 " ,- , t: :. 'f "" .f. ü '*' .%. :l :: ""*" ) "'J! 0/<&0 .". "' .....w .t.> '" a ,t;.( .. / * . < " .it. "'. i} '. ,." . '\ ,,: f:'" t . _.., " t3 ":":: :" ....<i-:: Jr'tI t , ^. v.-" It I'm totally pleased with my Doncaster busIness. Because my customers are my friends. I devote as many or as few hours to Doncaster as I want. My time is my own. And I make all the money I really want. liMy husband was a little concerned at first, because no vice president wants his wife to work. "But when you're the president what can he say? flY ou too can become a successful Doncaster representative "If you'd like to consider it, and want more information on Doncaster, or just want to be invited to the next Doncaster showIng in your area why not write my partner? "He's Mike Tanner, Vice President Doncaster, Dept 92, Rutherfordton, North CarolIna 28139. " He'll be delighted to send you the facts!' doncaster Rutherfordton North Carolina .. . """. F '<:. ....-< þ...... . # noon. "It sounded just fine to ll1e. I want people to be people. To ll1e, the important thing is that there's a ll1an in this world \\Tho's thinking great things. Chtisto's putting up all his own ll10n- ey-he's not out here begging for cash. And 1 think as long as that's the case, in an)' country a man ought to be able h . . d " to express IS 1 ease A few weeks earlier, in May, a telephone poll by the ll1anager of the Rifle radio station had found a hun- dred and t\\Tent}-seven people in favor of the Valley Curtain and twenty-three opposed to it. J imll1 Seaney, who runs Station K""'SR from the lobby of the vVin- chester Hotel (Teddy Roose- velt once stayed there on a hun ting trip), took down the name and address of each person he called, and he claims that most of the negative votes came from people in other towns. As soon as he had finished his poll, Seaney got together with the mayor of RIfle and SOine of hIs fello\\T- Inembers of the Chamber of Commerce and put through a conference call to the governor's office in Denver. Governor John Love had rather carefully a voided taking a position on the Valley Curtain up to this time. He had been quoted as saying that the project "doesn't appeal to me as a great \\Tork of art" -un- doubtedly a prudent remark in a state \\There ne\\Tly hatched conservationists are thicker and more active politically than lovers of advanced art. According to Seaner, though, the Governor took their call right a\\Tay and listened re- spectfully to the results of the telephone poll. "Why do you people \\Tant that curtain, anY\\Tay?" Seaner remembers his asking. "1 told him that \\Te \\Tere in a depressed economic situation over here, and that, if nothing else, Chris- to's curtain \\Tould bring an influx of touri'\ts and give us a shot in the arm," Seaner said. "The Governor said, 'I'll accept that.' He asked how the \\Teath- er \\Tas, and hung up, and the next day he got thrown off a horse." A lot of people think that Seaney's poll was a big factor in the High way Departlnent's decision to give Christo his pern1it, \\Thich came through on July 12th. T IME was going by, and I had to get back to N e\\y York. ChI isto, too, had to leave-in his case for Houston, \\There the Houston Museum of Fine Arts \\Tas opening a special ex- hibition of documents, photographs, dra wings, and models related to the Valley Curtain. From time to time fOI the rest of the SUll1mer, I kept wonder- ing how the project was faring. Then, FEßRI1ARY 5, I 9 7 2. at a dinner party one evening in Octo- ber, a Ne\\ York art-\\Torld IUll1inary reported \\Tith enorll10US glee and satis- factIon that the Valley Curtain had COll1e to grief that very afternoon- had broken loose from its ll100rings \\Thile it \\Tas being raised in to position, and had torn itself to pieces on the rocks below. The local anti-Christo brand of cultural chauvinisll1 had never been more clearly in evidence. By the till1e I sa\\T Christo agclin- in Ne\\T York, about a \\Teek later- he had more or less recovered from the experience. Disasters of one sort or another \\Tere not altogether ne\\T in his career. During the wrapping of the Austr dlian coastline, for ex- ample, a freak storm, with winds up to a hundred miles an hour, had destroyed about a third of the fab- ric and set the project back for several weeks; the year before, a two-hundred- and-eIghty-foot sausage-shaped balloon called 5,600 Cubic Meter Package, which Christo was making for the "I)ocumenta IV" exhibition in Kassel, German) , ripped apart three times while being inflated or hoisted into po- sition. In Rifle, ChrIsto had announced that the Valley Curtain would be hung \\ithout fail in June, 19ì2, and he and Jeanne-Claude were nO\\T throwing thell1selves cheerfully into the work of raising funds for cl new curtain. This was going to cost at least seventy thou- sand dollars (the insurance on the orig- inal curtain applied only to potential victiIns, not to the fabric itself), but neither Christo nor Jeanne-Claude seemed worried about that. As she put it, in her brisk and chipper fashion, "the money is not the problem." The real problem, according to Christo, van der Marck, 1.nd several other witnesses I talked with subse- quently, had been the Morrison-Knud- sen contracting cre\\T. For a long time, Christo had been un willing to take seri- ously the reports he kept hearing froln friends in Rifle-reports that the con- struction workers looked upon the whole project as a joke and were say- ing so night after night over their beers in Me's Cafe. It is important to Christo to believe that the workers become art- ists \\Then they \\Tork on one of his proj- ects, and he kept on believing it In this instance as long as he could. As the summer \\Tore on, though, the number of engineel ing breakdowns and failures did begin to seem a little excessive. Equipment proved inadequate for the job at hand and had to be replaced. A winch that was to pul] the steel cable from its shipping drum pulled too fast, causing a monumental tangle that took